Thus part we rich in forrow, parting poor.

[Exeunt Servants.
O, the fierce wretchedness 4 that glory brings us!
Who would not wish to be from wealth exempt,
Since riches point to mifery and contempt?
Who'd be fo mock'd with glory? or to live
But in a dream of friendship?

To have his pomp, and all what state compounds,
But only painted, like his varnish'd friends?
Poor honeft lord, brought low by his own heart;
Undone by goodness! Strange, unusual blood,

3

- rich in forrow, parting poor.] This conceit occurs again in King Lear: "Fairest Cordelia, thou art most rich, being poor."

STEEVENS.

4 O, the fierce wretchedness-] I believe fierce is here used for basty, precipitate. Perhaps it is employed in the same sense by Ben Jonfon in his Poetafter:

" And Lupus, for your fierce credulity,

"One fit him with a larger pair of ears."

In King Henry VIII. our author has fierce vanities. In all in

stances it may mean glaring, conspicuous, violent. Jonfon's Bartholomew Fair, the Puritan fays:

So, in Ben

Thy hobby-horse is an idol, a fierce and rank idol."

Again, in King John:

" O vanity of fickness! fierce extremes
"In their continuance will not feel themselves."

Again, in Love's Labour's Loft :

5

" With all the fierce endeavour of your wit." STEEVENS.

-Strange, unusual blood,] Of this paffage, I suppose, every reader would with for a correction: but the word, harsh as it is, stands fortified by the rhyme, to which, perhaps, it owes its introduction. I know not what to propose. Perhaps,

Strange, unusual mood,

may, by fome, be thought better, and by others worse.

JOHNSON.

In The Yorkshire Tragedy, 1608, attributed to Shakspeare, blood Teems to be used for inclination, propensity:

"For 'tis our blood to love what we are forbidden." Strange, unusual blood, may therefore mean, strange unusual dispofition.

When man's worst fin is, he does too much good!
Who then dares to be half so kind again?
For bounty, that makes gods, does still mar men.
My dearest lord, -bless'd, to be most accurs'd,
Rich, only to be wretched ;-thy great fortunes
Are made thy chief afflictions. Alas, kind lord!
He's flung in rage from this ungrateful feat

Of monstrous friends: nor has he with him to
Supply his life, or that which can command it.
I'll follow, and inquire him out:
I'll ever serve his mind with my best will;
Whilft I have gold, I'll be his steward still. (Exit.

SCENE III.

The Woods.

Enter TIMON.

TIM. O blessed breeding fun, draw from the earth Rotten humidity; below thy fifter's orb Infect the air! Twinn'd brothers of one womb,Whose procreation, residence, and birth,

Again, in the 5th book of Gower De Confeffione Amantis, fol.

iii. b:

"And thus of thilke unkinde blood

"Stant the memorie unto this daie."

Gower is speaking of the ingratitude of one Adrian, a lord of Rome. STEEVENS.

Throughout these plays blood is frequently used in the sense of natural propenfity or disposition. See Vol. IV. p. 254, n. 7; and p. 456, n. 3. MALONE.

6

below thy fifter's orb-)

fublunary world. JOHNSON.

That is, the moon's, this Scarce is dividant, -touch them with several for

tunes;

The greater scorns the leffer: Not nature,

To whom all fores lay fiege, can bear great fortune,

But by contempt of nature."

Raise me this beggar, and denude that lord;

7

Not nature,

To whom all fores lay fiege, can bear great fortune,

But by contempt of nature. The meaning I take to be this: Brother, when his fortune is enlarged, will scorn brother; for this is the general depravity of human nature, which, besieged as it is by mifery, admonished as it is of want and imperfection, when elevated by fortune, will defpife beings of nature like its own.

JOHNSON.

Mr. M. Mason observes, that this passage "but by the addition of a fingle letter may be rendered clearly intelligible; by merely reading natures instead of nature." The meaning will then be"Not even beings reduced to the utmost extremity of wretchedness, can bear good fortune, without contemning their fellowcreatures." The word natures is afterwards used in a fimilar sense by Apemantus:

Call the creatures

" Whose naked natures live in all the spite
"Of wreakful heaven," &c.

Perhaps, in the present instance, we ought to complete the measure by reading:

not those natures, .

STEEVENS.

But by is here used for without. MALONE.

8 Raise me this beggar, and denude that lord;] [Old copydeny't that lord.] Where is the sense and English of deny't that lord? Deny him what? What preceding noun is there to which the pronoun it is to be referr'd? And it would be absurd to think the poet meant, deny to raise that lord. The antithesis must be, let fortune raise this beggar, and let her trip and despoil that lord of all his pomp and ornaments, &c. which sense is completed by this flight alteration:

and denude that lord;.

So, lord Rea, in his relation of M. Hamilton's plot, written in 1650: "All these Hamiltons had denuded themselves of their fortunes and estates." And Charles the First, in his message to the parliament says: "Denude ourselves of all."-Clar. Vol. III. p. 15, octavo edit.

WARBURTON.

The fenator shall bear contempt hereditary,
The beggar native honour.

It is the pasture lards the brother's fides,

So, as Theobald has observed, in our author's Venus and Adonis : " Pluck down the rich, enrich the poor with treafures."

MALONE.

Perhaps the former reading, however irregular, is the true one. Raise me that beggar, and deny a proportionable degree of elevation to that lord. A lord is not so high a title in the state, but that a man originally poor might be raised to one above it. We might read devest that lord. Devest is an English law phrafe, which Shakspeare uses in King Lear:

" Since now we will devest us both of rule," &c. The word which Dr. Warburton would introduce, is not, however, uncommon. I find it in The Tragedie of Cræfus, 1604: "As one of all happiness denuded." STEEVENS.

9 It is the pasture lards the brother's fides,] This, as the editors have ordered it, is an idle repetition at the best ; fuppofing it did, indeed, contain the same sentiment as the foregoing lines. But Shakspeare meant quite a different thing: and having, like a fenfible writer, made a smart observation, he illustrates it by a fimilitude thus:

It is the pasture lards the wether's fides,
The want that makes him lean.

And the fimilitude is extremely beautiful, as conveying this fatirical reflection; there is no more difference between man and man in the esteem of fuperficial and corrupt judgements, than between a fat sheep and a lean one.

WARBURTON.

This passage is very obscure, nor do I discover any clear sense, even though we should admit the emendation. Let us inspect the text as it stands in the original edition :

It is the paftour lards the brother's fides,
The want that makes him leave..

Dr. Warburton found the passage already changed thus:
It is the pasture lards the beggar's fides,
The want that makes him lean.

And upon this reading of no authority, raised another equally

uncertain.

Alterations are never to be made without neceffity. Let us fee what sense the genuine reading will afford. Poverty, says the poet, bears contempt hereditary, and wealth native honour. To illustrate this pofition, having already mentioned the cafe of a poor and rich

The want that makes him lean. Who dares, who

dares,

brother, he remarks, that this preference is given to wealth by those whom it leaft becomes; it is the pastour that greafes or flatters the rich brother, and will grease him on till want make him leave. The poet then goes on to alk, Who dares to say this man, this pastour is a flatterer; the crime is universal; through all the world the learned pate, with allusion to the pastour, ducks to the golden fool. If it be objected, as it may justly be, that the mention of a paftour is unsuitable, we must remember the mention of grace and cherubims in this play, and many fuch anachronisms in many others. I would therefore read thus:

It is the paftour lards the brother's fides,
'Tis want that makes him leave.

The obfcurity is still great. Perhaps a line is loft. I have at least given the original reading. JOHNSON.

Perhaps Shakspeare wrote pafterer, for I meet with fuch a word in Greene's Farewell to Follie, 1617: "Alexander, before he fell into the Persian delicacies, refused those cooks and pafterers that Ada queen of Caria fent to him." There is likewise a proverb among Ray's collection, which seems to afford much the fame meaning as this passage in Shakspeare: -" Every one basteth the fat hog, while the lean one burneth." Again, in Troilus and Creffida, Act II:

" That were to enlard his fat-already pride."

STEEVENS.

In this very difficult passage, which still remains obfcure, some liberty may be indulged. Dr. Farmer proposes to read it thus :

It is the pasterer lards the broader fides,

The gaunt that makes him leave.

And in fupport of this conjecture, he observes, that the Saxon dis frequently converted into th, as in murther, murder, burthen, burden, &c. REED.

That the paffage is corrupt as it stands in the old copy, no one, I fuppofe, can doubt; emendation therefore in this and a few other places, is not a matter of choice but neceffity. I have already more than once obferved, that many corruptions have crept into the old copy, by the transcriber's ear deceiving him. In Coriolanus we have higher for hire, and hope for holp; in the present play reverends for reverends't; and in almost every play similar corruptions. In King Richard II. quarto, 1598, we find the very error that happened here: